INTRODUCTION TO PART 1 In the first place, Christianity may be subordinated to culture. That solution really, though to some extent unconsciously, is being favored by a very large and influential portion of the Church to-day. For the elimination of the supernatural in Christianity--so tremendously common to-day--really makes Christianity merely natural. Christianity becomes a human product, a mere part of human culture. . . . The second solution goes to the opposite extreme. In its effort to give religion a clear field, it seeks to destroy culture. This solution is better than the first. Instead of indulging in a shallow optimism or deification of humanity, it recognizes the profound evil of the world, and does not shrink from the most heroic remedy. . . . Therefore, it is argued, the culture of this world must be a matter at least of indifference to the Christian. . . . Are then Christianity and culture in a conflict that is to be settled only by the destruction of one or the other of the contending forces? A third solution, fortunately, is possible--namely consecration. Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God.
J. Gresham Machen (1913)(1)
Machen's 1913 Princeton Theological Review essay was his 1912 lecture to the incoming students at Princeton Theological Seminary. In this lecture, he set forth an analytical framework for understanding modern theology. This framework is what his older contemporary, German sociologist Max Weber, called an ideal type,(2) and what Thomas Kuhn calls a paradigm.(3) An ideal type is a model, a conceptual pattern that enables us to understand the details of historical reality. While it does not "do justice" to every fact perfectly, it enables us to understand the complex interrelationships of facts. It serves as the map of the forest; without it, we are blinded by the jumble of trees.
Machen in 1913 argued that there were three separate religious traditions battling for the hearts of Protestants: culturalism (modernism), anti-culturalism (pietism), and consecrationism (Calvinism). Each outlook was well represented in the Presbyterian Church. The interplay of these three theologies led to the resolution of institutional conflict in 1936. For purposes of understanding the Presbyterian conflict, his three-fold model is indispensable.
He abandoned this three-fold model a decade later in his book, Christianity and Liberalism, in favor of a two-religion model. In fact, he abandoned it as early as 1915 in his inaugural lecture, "History and Faith." His language in 1915 sounds very much like his language in the early 1930's. "Two conceptions of Christianity are struggling for ascendency [sic] to-day. . . . The Church is in perplexity. She is trying to compromise. She is saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. And rapidly she is losing her power. The time has come when she must choose."(4) Machen wanted the Presbyterian Church to choose. In 1936, it did: against him. Machen believed that this battle was, above all, a battle over theology.
From the point of view of the Christian gospel, this two-fold analysis is correct: saved vs. lost, covenant-keepers vs. covenant-breakers. It was also strategically important for the conservatives' strategy in the 1920's, since his three-fold model told him that they had to get the votes of the pietist middle in the denomination. Calvinists had to rally the troops, and these troops included large numbers of covenant-keeping pietists. So, rhetorically speaking, the two-fold model was better for public consumption: good guys vs. bad guys. But Machen's public position in the 1920's and the first half of the 1930's--two religions battling for control of the Church--made it difficult for him to explain to his followers why he kept losing. Covenant-breakers obviously did not comprise a majority in the Church. Covenant-keepers, mostly pietists and anti-culturalists, did. To have identified the pietists as a major part of the Church's problem would have alienated them. It would also have publicly acknowledged that Machen did not speak for the majority or anything like a majority. This is poor positioning for any leader in a battle for votes. So, until 1935, when he was clearly defeated and now had to prepare a remnant for an exodus out of the Church, he ignored his original three-fold analysis.
As an historian, I do not ignore it. I make very heavy use of it. I agree with Machen: the key issues of life are theological. His three-fold analysis is crucial for understanding the history of the defeat of the Calvinists in the Presbyterian Church. It is just as crucial for understanding the surrender of Christendom by the Christians. We must pay close attention to theology.
The Relevance of Theology Modern man has little respect for theology and even less taste for it. Yet he indulges in it daily. He lives his life in terms of a series of implicit assumptions about God, man, law, sanctions, and time, as well as eternity. He is generally unaware of his implicit theology, but he always has one.
The average person is not a master of any intellectual specialty, but he is dependent on those who are. Men have always been dependent on priests. In our era, we have substituted new priesthoods for old, but we remain in the clutches of one priesthood or another: teachers, lawyers, physicians, scientists, military specialists, central bankers, software code writers, network television news anchormen, and so forth. Each has a system of initiation; each has a temple of some kind; each dispenses blessings and cursings. Modern man does not accept the fact that the debates among theologians have the same importance in his life, let alone in a culture's life, as the debates among scientists, but modern man is wrong. He relegates such matters to funerals, but funerals should remind him: ideas have consequences--eternal consequences.
Theology is complex. Even though most people do not understand this complexity, it makes a difference what they believe about God, man, law, sanctions, and time. It made a tremendous difference for the West that Athanasius won in his long theological battle with Arius, namely, that with respect to the Second Person of the Trinity, homoousion (same essence) is true and homoiousion (like essence) is not. The extra "i" made all the difference theologically. Athanasius held that Jesus Christ was not of like essence as God the Father, but of the same essence.
The skeptic's familiar refrain--like the theological liberal's(5)--dismisses as silly those theologians who debated the cosmic importance of an "i," but such contempt is itself historically and theologically silly. That particular "i" is far more important than the "I" which begins so many of men's sentences. It is that missing "i" which defines Christianity. Churches through the ages have not been in agreement regarding the doctrines of man, law, sanctions, and eschatology (last things), but they have been agreed on one issue, which was declared in 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicea: homoousion. Our world is what it is because of that ancient confession. Yet we hear no discussion of this fact in the typical history class, even a class in Church history in a conservative theological seminary. How many pastors could present a plausible case to show why Christian society is different from non-Christian society because Christians believed homoousion rather than homoiousion?(6)
The modern world has continued to debate the old issues of the Council of Nicea, although with new terminology and new accents. The modern world is still tearing itself apart over the meaning of, truth of, and relevance of that missing "i" in homoousion. Modern man knows in his heart (Rom. 2:14-15) that without that "i," his capitalized "I" is subordinate to Jesus Christ. He resents this fact of eternal life. He wages multiple wars against it.
Conclusion From the 1720's until 1936, there was a war for the control of the Presbyterian Church. This war was theological. Machen's three-fold analysis provides a useful conceptual tool for understanding this war. But Machen did not offer a detailed theological analysis of the three camps. In Chapter 1, I do. I invoke Calvinism's covenant theology. I apply the biblical covenant model (a God-given ideal type) to the three factions of American Presbyterianism. To make sense out of the Presbyterian conflict, we have to understand the rival covenantal theologies.
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Footnotes:
1. Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review, 11 (Jan. 1913), pp. 3-5 [http://www.markers.com/ink/jgmculture.htm].
2. Thomas Burger, Max Weber's Theory of Concept Formation: History, Laws, and Ideal Types (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976), Part IV; Rolf E. Rogers, Max Weber's Ideal Type Theory (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
3. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
4. Machen, "History and Faith," Princeton Theological Review, 13 (July 1915), p. 351.
5. Presbyterian liberal Henry van Dyke dismissed this debate as meaningless. The Bible As It Is (New York: Session, 1893), p. 11.
6. Hint: because Jesus did not evolve into God; He was of the same essence as God from the beginning. Hint: because God has manifested Himself in history. R. J. Rushdoony, The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1968] 1978), ch. 1.